Cinématon (1978)

Directed by

Gérard Courant

Genre

documentary film, silent film

Country

France

Runtime

197h 08m

Rating

4.9 of 10 from 7 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is an experimental film made of thousands of silent three-minute clips. Each clip shows a different celebrity or friend of the director doing something simple for the camera. The whole movie was shot over 30 years and lasts 157 hours.

experimentalpatientintimatehypnoticminimalistcontemplativefragmentedpersonallo-fi

What happens

Cinématon is a 157-hour-long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 30 years from 1978 until 2009, it consists of a series of over 3,111 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Sergey Parajanov, Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach in April 2010. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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